In December 2014, Brad Hirsch stood on the gaming floor of the Harrahs Metropolis Casino and Hotel in Metropolis, Illinois. Hirsch had assumed the position of Senior Vice President and General Manager at this Caesars Entertainment property in mid-2014. Caesars culture was strongly oriented toward optimizing the customer experience. This history, coupled with increased competitive pressures and new corporate financial goals for 2015, had created the motivation to intensify improvement efforts at the Metropolis facility. Hirsch had successfully led employee-centered initiatives to apply LEAN1 operating principles in three of the companys casinos in Tunica, Mississippi. He believed that what he learned from those experiences would be applicable at the Metropolis location, but wondered if he should consider a modified approach that could potentially produce results more quickly with the help of a team of internal experts. In 2014, Caesars Entertainment, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, was the worlds most geographically diversified provider of casino entertainment. With 68,000 employees worldwide, it operated 50 casinos in the U.S., Egypt, England, South Africa, and Canada, under the names Harrahs, Caesars, Rio, Flamingo, Paris, Ballys, Horseshoe, and London Clubs International. Its largest concentration of properties was in Las Vegas, where nine of its casinos occupied 1.25 miles on or near Las Vegas Boulevard, commonly known as The Strip. In 2013, the company had net revenue of $8.6 billion U.S. Caesars had developed an industry-leading loyalty-card program, introduced sophisticated customer-service measurement systems, and had been the first to apply LEAN process-improvement concepts to casino operations. (For more on LEAN principles, see Appendix A.) As Hirsch thought about the challenges that lay ahead for LEAN implementation aimed at customer-service enhancement and operational effectiveness at the new Harrahs Metropolis Casino and Hotel, he reflected on his previous experience in Tunica. LEAN Implementation at Caesars in Tunica, Mississippi At the end of 2008, Tunica, Mississippi, located about a 45-minute drive south of Memphis, Tennessee, was the fourth-largest gaming market in the world with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. Three of Tunicas nine casinos were owned by Caesars. These three generated $545 million in revenue and accounted for 50% of the Tunica market. Over 4,000 employees worked across the three Caesars properties, delivering hospitality and entertainment services to 8,000,000 guests annually. In late 2008, the economic environment for the Caesars Tunica casinos was a serious concern. First, the U.S. macroeconomic collapse of the Great Recession had led to reduced customer spending on entertainment. As a consequence, casinos in the region experienced declines in revenue, and competition for market share was intense. Beyond the impetus for improvement inspired by macroeconomic challenges, all Caesars-owned properties embraced customer service as an essential element of the corporate operating strategy, and strove to continuously increase customer satisfaction as gauged by rating scores. Every week, Caesars surveyed a random sample of recent customers for each property. Survey respondents assigned scores of A, B, C, D, or F for various dimensions of their Caesars experience (staff helpfulness, staff friendliness, speed of service, and other metrics). Data showed that moving a customer from a B to an A score resulted in up to a 12% increase in customer 1 Caesars Entertainment capitalized the word LEAN to emphasize its role as a systematic program and distance it from any connotations associated with a more narrow view that might suggest downsizing.

Read the LEAN case study carefully and answer the questions below. Be sure to cite all references that you use that come from outside of the case. Make sure that anything not cited in your paper is your original work. The grade for the case will be based on the clarity (readability), coverage of the questions (you address each topic), and the depth of the analysis. 1. Discuss a particular business you know of (not related to the case) that you think would benefit most from the expert-driven approach to process improvement. Explain why you believe this to be the case compared to using the employee-centered approach. What will be the challenges in implementing the approach? 2. Discuss a particular business you know of (not related to the case) that you think would benefit most from the employee-centered approach to process improvement. Explain why you believe this to be the case compared to using the expert-driven approach. What will be the challenges in implementing the approach? 3. For one of the examples of #1 or #2 above, what KPIs (key performance indicators) would you use to measure and track the performance of process improvement initiatives? Explain their importance. 4. Do you think introducing LEAN now into a company whose operations had been drastically altered by COVID (e.g. CUD) would be a good idea? Explain your reasoning.